“LADY CLOWN” by Robert Foster

I am a mime. They knew this from the moment they laid eyes on me, doing what I did, my pantomimes in the middle of the square. They could read it in the anguish of my ivory-tinted face, in the tiny black triangles of despair beneath my lashes that mirrored the darkness in my eyes. They could feel it in the sensual gloss of my costume, in the skin-tight trappings that did in truth trap me. They heard it in the silence of my unuttered screams, the snarls of my copper hair, the beating of my nonexistent wings. I am a mime, so they knew that if they took me and they paraded me around the world, I would be helpless to cry out and stop them. I am as vulnerable and attached to them as their clawless lions that jump through hoops of fire, manes and dignities singed with each leap, for it is they who encourage me, who clothe me, who feed me, who reassure me of the dangersand darkness of the world beyond their world. But one day I will be free. One day I will climb astride a clawless lion and I will dig myheels into its glossy tawny flanks and my hands in its mane will order it to charge. And we will gallop far from here, we will sprint to the savannas of Africa and the hills of Malaysia, and we will be free, will be free, be free, free of the dangers and darkness of a world we left behind.

 
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